MacDonald attorney argues that murder conviction should be overturned

Tuesday

Apr 2, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 2, 2013 at 10:00 AM

Fayetteville Observer

The lawyer for former Army doctor Jeffrey MacDonald argued in a memo filed Monday that new evidence should overturn his conviction for the 1970 murders of his wife and children at their Fort Bragg home.

Lawyer Gordon Widenhouse of Chapel Hill reiterates evidence he presented during a seven-day hearing in federal court last September. Prosecutors have 60 days to file a response.

The memo includes some of the key points made by MacDonald's defense, including statements from Helena Stoeckley that she was in the house with three men who killed the family and that she was pressured by a prosecutor to lie during MacDonald's trial.

The defense also points to DNA evidence from unidentified people that could indicate intruders were in the home. The technology to test DNA did not exist when MacDonald was tried in 1979.

The combination of the DNA and Stoeckley's statements “show by clear and convincing evidence that no reasonable juror would have found Jeffrey MacDonald guilty if she had heard this new evidence,” Widenhouse wrote.

MacDonald, 69, was an Army captain and physician assigned to support a Special Forces unit at Fort Bragg in 1969. His wife and children, ages 2 and 5, were slain in February 1970. MacDonald, who was home the night of the murders, and suffered a stab wound that collapsed a lung.

Prosecutors at a federal trial in 1979 persuaded a jury that MacDonald killed his family. They argued that MacDonald overturned furniture and stabbed himself to lend credence to his assertion that intruders attacked his family. He is serving three life sentences.

The homicide is often called the “Fatal Vision” case after a book about it by Joe McGinness. It drew wide media attention and has been the subject of several books and a television miniseries.

Widenhouse presented testimony from Stoeckley's lawyer, who said that Stoeckley privately admitted to her role in the murders. Stoeckley had been summoned to testify at the 1979 trial because she previously made incriminating statements. Stoeckley died a few years later.

Widenhouse also introduced statements attributed to a former U.S. mashal, now deceased, who said he heard prosecutor Jim Blackburn at the 1979 trial threaten to prosecute Stoeckley if she told the jury she was in the house.

During the September hearing in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, three prosecutors sought to undercut MacDonald's claims. They brought out evidence that damaged the credibility of the marshal who came forward in 2005 and said he heard Blackburn threaten Stoeckley.

The unidentified DNA is from several hairs collected as evidence.

Prosecutors said some of these could have been in the house long before the murders. They argued that a hair, from under the fingernail of one of the girls, could have been mixed in by accident, an example of evidence contamination from an era in which law enforcement was less stringent than today about protecting the integrity of materials collected at a crime scene.